On this episode of Special Sauce I talk to the James Beard award winning chef Ann Kim. Ann opened her first restaurant, Pizzeria Lola, in Minneapolis in 2010 without ever having cooked professionally. In fact, she was a working actor before she realized that it was cooking that made her happy.

On this episode of Special we dig still deeper into America's regional hot dog styles with food writer JJ Goode, who just wrote an entertaining and informative guide to American regional hot dog styles for the NYT.

On this episode of Special Sauce we go deep into dogs, hot dogs that is, with JJ Goode, who wrote a guide to regional hot dogs styles for the NY Times. We also checked in with a few hot dog devotees and got their hot take on one of the world's most popular foods.

On this episode of Special Sauce Kenji is back with some tips for grilling vegetables.

On this episode of Special Sauce Kenji is back with some surefire (pun intended) tips for grilling chicken and fish.

On this episode of Special Sauce, we talk about the joys of grilling pizza with Kenji.

J. Kenji Lopez Alt is a New York Times cooking columnist and the host of Kenji's Cooking Show on YouTube. He’s also the best selling author of The Wok, The Food Lab, and the children's book Every Night is Pizza Night.

This week on Special Sauce we talk to pastry chef extraordinaire Natasha Pickowicz. Natasha is as the title of her new book More Than Cake implies, much more than a baker. Natasha is an original thinker, a fine writer, and a thoughtful soul. Her path to making delicious pastries is anything but typical.

This week on Special Sauce Part 2 of my conversation with chef Hamissi Mamba, who runs the amazing East African spot Baobab Fare in Detroit with his wife Nadia Nijimbere. With the restaurant, their African market called Soko, and their street food pop-up Waka, Mamba and Nadia are building a cultural bridge between Detroit and their native Burundi. They fled their home country as refugees, determined to build new lives in the US with their children - and the traditional dishes they grew up with became the foundation.

This week I'm talking with Hamissi Mamba about the long road to success from his native Burundi to the vibrant food scene in Detroit.

On the second Special Sauce episode Kenji and I did live from the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY last March we talked about his latest book ‘The Wok’, Kenji and I successfully cooked eggs and tomatoes in a wok onstage and I didn’t get fired as his sous-chef for inadequately chopping the scallions.  Kenji also answered questions from the audience ranging from the best oil to cook with in a wok to how to involve young children in cooking. He also told us what happened when he made a  creme brulee for an architecture class project at MIT. I'm not sure it went well. Kenji and I had so much fun we thought people would enjoy listening again. Kenji of course has been very busy since we taped this episode last year. He was a judge on the Roku Channel's sushi competition show Morimoto's Sushi Master. And Kenji's Cooking Show on Youtube continues to entertain and inform millions of subscribers.